Long-tenured valley winery Walla Walla Vintners has some interesting changes in the works, including a redesigned website and a first-ever wine club. The new website contains a series of videos that provide the winery’s story as well as discuss the latest releases. Meanwhile the wine club releases include the winery’s first wine from its estate vineyard – a 2010 Syrah (NB: The Tulpen wines reviewed below come from this same region of the valley).

The current releases once again show Walla Walla Vintners doing what it does best - produce high quality wines that punch well above their weight class. The 2010 Merlot is an absurdly good wine for $28 and the 2010 Malbec is about as good as the grape gets here for just a couple dollars more. The former shows luxurious use of new French oak, the latter dials the oak back and let’s the fruit shine.

Walla Walla Vintners Syrah Walla Walla Valley 2010 $32 (Good/Excellent) A black pepper filled wine that also shows cherries, mineral, and a touch of coffee and chocolate. The palate is tart, on the lighter side of medium bodied in feel but with penetrating fruit flavors. Broadens out and ramps up in intensity after a day of being open. 14.5% alcohol. Sample provided by winery.

Walla Walla Vintners Estate Syrah Walla Walla Valley 2010 $36(Excellent) This first bottling from Walla Walla Vintners’ Estate Vineyard is aromatically brooding with coffee, scorched earth, a light floral tone, wild blueberry, and cherry. The palate is perfumed and airy in feel with savory flavors and incredible elegance with supple, polished tannins. A very pretty, very elegant wine that shows the promise of this vineyard site. 14.5% alcohol. Sample provided by winery.

The Grande Dalles

The Grande Dalles is an estate wine micro producer located near The Dalles, Oregon. The winery was founded by the husband and wife team Scott Elder and Stephanie LaMonica. LaMonica writes, “If I can say anything about our wines, it is this: we grow our grapes and make our wines to frame the year, whatever that may be. Minerality, earth, savoriness, reticent fruit: this is what we relish in the wines we make. We also know our wines are not for everyone, but then again, that was never the idea.”

Elder and LaMonica identified the spot they wanted to plant a vineyard using Google Earth while living in Ireland back in 2005, using the application to find just the right elevation, incline, and aspect. “Land that wasn’t even for sale,” LaMonica notes. The estate vineyard is located on the Oregon side of the Columbia Valley, just outside of The Dalles.

The Grande Dalles’ current releases include a bone dry Riesling and three red wines. All are unique in style and display the promise of this vineyard site. The most intriguing of the lineup is the 2008 Home Place Red Wine, a blend of mostly Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s one of the more distinctive Northwest wines I’ve come across lately with great aromatic complexity and an absolute mouthful of tobacco flavors. As with the winery’s Longchamp Cabernet Sauvignon, the tannins can be quite rustic and intense here. Still, the appeal and uniqueness of the wine cannot be ignored.

The Grande Dalles Home Place Red Wine Columbia Valley 2008 $60(Excellent) An aromatic, incredibly distinctive wine with freshly ground tobacco, orange peel, dark cherries, licorice, and light herbal tones. The palate is absolutely loaded with tobacco flavors and a wall of rustic tannins that take a full day of being open to begin to resolve. Needs food to help temper the tannins but delivers a lot of enjoyment and is among the more unique wines I’ve come across in the Northwest. 70% Tempranillo, 28% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Cabernet Franc. Rock Flower Hill Vineyard. Aged 16 months in French oak. 13.5% alcohol. 115 cases produced. Sample provided by winery.

The Grande Dalles Longchamp Red Wine Columbia Valley 2009 $NA(Good) The first vintage of this estate Cabernet named after a wine shop in France, this is an aromatic wine with black and red licorice, tobacco, herbs, and cassis. The palate has firm, rustic tannins that squeeze tightly, surrounded by flavors of cherry and earth. 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Rock Flour Hill Vineyard. 13.5% alcohol. 215 cases produced. Sample provided by winery.

L’Ecole No 41

L’Ecole No 41’s latest releases include a rare Seven Hills Vineyard-designated Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. This distinctive site, located in the southern section of the Walla Walla Valley, accounts for nearly one third of L’Ecole’s red wine production. With its first plantings in 1981, Seven Hills is one of the older vineyards in the valley, though most of the vines on the now 230-acre site are considerably younger. The vineyard is known for producing wines with supple tannic structure and elegance and these two wines – as well as the others reviewed below from this site – show this in abundance.

These two new wines from Tulpen Cellars are unique in that they are some of the few wines coming out of the Walla Walla Valley - or Washington for that matter - where the vineyard was dry farmed, meaning that no irrigation was used. Both wines come from Yellow Bird Vineyard in the Upper Mill Creek area of the valley. The vineyard sits at an elevation of 1,450 feet and receives 20 inches of rainfall annually.